"Load Error! Press a key to reboot ..."

[Desperate User]

Help, 4 mth old Toshiba Satellite A30 with a 60GB Hitachi
hard drive has suddenly stopped booting.

It went back in for wty repairs - to be told motherboard
issue, was 2 day turnaround, has come back 2 weeks later
in the same state, it left in. Have given up with
Toshiba.

Heading interstate Sun night and need laptop going for
data logging at kart race meeting DESPERATELY.

Recovery disks - useless, Win XP reinstall - useless, can
get a BIOS from Toshiba's site - useless unless the
laptop has a 3.5" drive to use as it won't go to any
other media.

No matter how many times, I reboot, I cannot get past
this and at least recognise the hard drive, so I can do a
straight out re-format, etc.

Norton recovery - useless.

As you can see by the time logged on this post - now
almost 2 am and I've been at this since 6pm last night.

PLEASE help - any ideas are greatly appreciated in
advance.

Thank you

 

[D.Currie]

Help, 4 mth old Toshiba Satellite A30 with a 60GB Hitachi
hard drive has suddenly stopped booting.

It went back in for wty repairs - to be told motherboard
issue, was 2 day turnaround, has come back 2 weeks later
in the same state, it left in. Have given up with
Toshiba.

Heading interstate Sun night and need laptop going for
data logging at kart race meeting DESPERATELY.

Recovery disks - useless, Win XP reinstall - useless, can
get a BIOS from Toshiba's site - useless unless the
laptop has a 3.5" drive to use as it won't go to any
other media.

No matter how many times, I reboot, I cannot get past
this and at least recognise the hard drive, so I can do a
straight out re-format, etc.

Norton recovery - useless.

As you can see by the time logged on this post - now
almost 2 am and I've been at this since 6pm last night.

PLEASE help - any ideas are greatly appreciated in
advance.

Thank you

If the bios won't recognize the hard drive, there aren't any software
solutions that are going to do you any good. It's pretty obvious that you've
got a hardware problem, and with a laptop, the possibilities are limited.
It's the motherboard, the hard drive, or the connection between the two.

If you had an adapter, you could test the hard drive in a regular PC, but if
it's under warranty, there's really no sense in you spending the time
troubleshooting it if it's going to require parts anyway.

The one thing you might want to try, though, is making sure the hard drive
is seated firmly. Depending on how it's installed, it's remotely possible
that it could have lost contact.

 

[Guest]

Thanks D - but, it has already been back to Toshiba - they said 2 days, then
it ended up being 2 weeks, coming back unrepaired and no advice at 7pm on a
Fri night and we leave 6am Monday morning and need it functioning like
there's no tomorrow.

Can you advise me, as I've not done this before, how I can connect to my
main PC (which cable, etc.) and I will try that to format.

I've booted it via Boot disks but, keep getting A "General Error Reading
Driving A, A R or F" when I'm trying to go to the c:

It still goes to c: but, when dir /p, I am getting "invalid media type
reading driving C, A R or F?" again and can't get past it.

I have managed to delete the partition and re-load a new primary dos one
but, cannot get any further than the above now (which is still better than
this morning).

Any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[D.Currie]

Thanks D - but, it has already been back to Toshiba - they said 2 days,
then
it ended up being 2 weeks, coming back unrepaired and no advice at 7pm on
a
Fri night and we leave 6am Monday morning and need it functioning like
there's no tomorrow.

Can you advise me, as I've not done this before, how I can connect to my
main PC (which cable, etc.) and I will try that to format.

You'll need to buy an adapter that will allow you to connect the laptop
drive to a standard IDE cable. Good luck getting one on short notice.

I've booted it via Boot disks but, keep getting A "General Error Reading
Driving A, A R or F" when I'm trying to go to the c:

Drive A is your floppy, normally.

It still goes to c: but, when dir /p, I am getting "invalid media type
reading driving C, A R or F?" again and can't get past it.

Usually means that either the drive isn't formatted or it's bad.

I have managed to delete the partition and re-load a new primary dos one
but, cannot get any further than the above now (which is still better than
this morning).

Any suggestions?

You should be booting from your Windows CD or whatever recovery media you
got with the laptop. Reinstall the OS from there. You shouldn't need to do
any manual partitioning at all.